As of the close of September, 2008, I have terminated my relationship with Opera Audio/Consonance for reasons not necessarily relevant to this discussion, but can speak to the differences related to the product line, here specifically, their oversampling and non-OS CD player topologies.
First, in my opinion, the differences between the two are that the non-OS topology offers a more open, engaging, and exciting sound. The oversampling players offer a richer, more relaxed, and voluptuous nature, with more powerful and extended low frequency performance. Which one is best is obviously quite subjective. But, to answer which one is more "analog", in my estimation, it's the oversampling machines.
The CD120 Linear is one of the gems of the product line. I tried my darndest to keep the price artificially low at $995 so as to not really have any competition at its price point. Often, all it took to win a place in a dealership was to walk in with this player, have the staff A/B it against a Jolida or Rega, and I was soon good to go.
As far as I'm concerned, the Reference CD2.2 Linear is a quite an underwhelming performer. Especially, at its $1995 price point. The lightweight bottom end and overall thin sound were definitely not my cup of tea. Instead, the Reference CD2.2 MKII and CD120T oversampling players, at the same $1995 are easily superior, and especially good sounding units, and at this point, I'm keeping one as a personal reference in one of my systems.
Bottom line, if you're going to go with Consonance and you've got $1K to spend, go for the non-oversampling CD120 Linear. If you've got $2K, choose either the Reference CD2.2 MKII or CD120T oversampling, tube output machines with volume control. Bypass the oversampling CD120 Balanced and non-oversampling Reference CD2.2 Linear.
The achilles heel of all Consonance CD players, apart from the full-sized Droplet 5.0 (which uses the Philips CD transport) is the abysmal reliability of their Sony transport/laser head assemblies. In fact, the rate of failure of the total number of units (which includes the Droplet 5.0, whose transports NEVER fail) I imported in 2007 approaches 80%. So long as you can stomach that, which is a pretty big IF, they earn my recommendation.
Thank you,
Joe
